Third Leap Brewing & Blending Year In Review: 2017

With 2018 just hours away, I wanted to reserve some time to reflect on the incredible year that 2017 was for Third Leap Brewing & Blending.

This year was highlighted by my relocation from Massachusetts to Idaho. The move physically impacted our homebrewery in many ways – from ceasing brewing operations for several months to temporarily relegating our 10-gallon e-brewery to the garage. And the move mentally impacted our homebrewery as well, by stealing back time to refocus on the important aspects of Third Leap Brewing & Blending. This reflection manifested itself in many ways, namely in our perpetual Massachusetts foraged yeast project (Evolution Series) and Idaho’s first modern spontaneous beer (LambID)!

A Welcoming Sight – Idaho

Another byproduct of our refocus was the Third Leap Manifesto, a careful collection of 15 sentences that embody the values we live and work toward as a homebrewery. It has been a work-in-progress for the last several years, morphing from a simple motto to mission statement to eventual manifesto – and I honestly could not be happier with the end result! It truly represents the synergy of our guiding principles; ambient microflora, terroir, farm-to-table, zero-mile beer, and slow beer.

Our craving for knowledge was at its peak in 2017 and that culminated in the launch of SpontaneousBeer.com (SB), a dynamic and digital repository for American spontaneous beer production. My goal with SB was to share my personal research on new world spontaneous brewing techniques with the entire world! Only two thoroughly detailed articles (Allagash Brewing Company and Jester King Brewery) were launched before it caught the eye of Dan Pixley from Milk The Funk (MTF). After some careful thought and consideration, I decided to forgo the independent SB initiative and instead share my research within the massive MTF wiki and community.

This past year also marked an important milestone for Third Leap – our first homebrewery collaboration beer! In June we visited our goods friends Mike and Tom of Cold Spring Brewing in Belchertown, Massachusetts to brew on their brand new, three vessel, semi-automated electric brewery. The recipe was built around my Massachusetts foraged yeast, drew recipe inspiration from Farm Bière, and was ultimately soured with my house mixed culture. Cold Spring plans to aged the collaboration beer for approximately nine months before adding a series of fruit purees in one gallon carboys. Keep an eye out for a tasting recap post in late 2018!

Mike of Cold Spring, Mashing In

Last, but certainly not least, was our introduction to Mecca Grade Estate Malt. We discovered Mecca Grade by chance (via Instagram’s Explore Page) but quickly realized it was a match made in heaven for Third Leap! Mecca Grade is an estate malthouse located in the Central Oregon High Desert. Their eighth generation farming family grows and malts over a half dozen specialty grains for brewing (fortunately every grain we need for our recipes). In November, we transitioned to brewing exclusively with Mecca Grade malts – the first major step toward living the words from our manifesto!

Third Leap Beers Tasted

A lot of beer was consumed in 2017, especially homebrew! Despite not every beer receiving a proper tasting recap, below are highlights from each and every Third Leap homebrew consumed (for the first time) in 2017. For those that sound unfamiliar, you can expect to see a tasting blog post in the coming weeks and/or months.

Back East NEIPA – A Citra-hopped New England IPA fermented with Bootleg Biology Chardonnay yeast featuring notes of mango, orange, and peach. One of my favorite beers of 2017!

Third Leap Beers Brewed

Quite a bit of beer was brewed in 2017 too! Some of this year’s batches were already listed above (as beers we tasted), so they are omitted below. In total, we brewed 10 batches of beer in 2017 – despite moving across the country and being relegated to our one-gallon stove top pilot system for most of the year.

First Turbid Pull From LambID #1

Hollambic #3 – A Massachusetts spontaneous ale inspired by American Solera Western Culture

ThirdLeapBrew.com Statistics

Besides homebrew news, I thought it may be interesting to share some blog statistics from this past year. 2017 was our first full year of blogging and despite posting half as often as 2016, we attracted almost twice as many visitors!

Traffic Report By Month in 2017

Here are some site stats (through December 29) that I found quite interesting:

ThirdLeapBrew Instagram Statistics

In addition to blog statistics, I found Instagram statistics were also interesting enough to share. 2017 was one of our busiest social media years ever and we look forward to even more engagement in 2018!